Sidney Greidanus.

Preaching Christ from Psalms: Foundations for Expository Sermons in the

Christian Year. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016. 595 pages. $40.
Sidney Greidanus, Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Calvin Theological Seminary,
offers a study on Christian preaching from the Psalms in this volume. He follows the
methodology he used in his work Preaching Christ from the Old Testament (1999). It also
echoes ideas from his The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text (1988). He has also written on
the theme of Preaching Christ in three other volumes on Genesis, Ecclesiastes and Daniel.
He bases his study on 22 psalms from the Psalm reading from The Revised Common
Lectionary Year A. However, preaching from the Psalms does not need to be limited to this and
he offers a variety of helpful suggestions in an appendix, “Series of Sermons on the Psalms.”
Chapter one discusses issues found in preaching Christ from the Psalms. He addresses
such objections as the Psalms were meant to be prayed or sung in the church. He emphasizes that
preaching Christ from the Psalms should not be a forced ideology. His approach to preaching
Christ from the Psalms is to “preaching sermons which authentically integrate the message of the
text with the climax of God’s revelation in the person, work, and/or teaching of Jesus Christ as
revealed in the New Testament” (5). Greidanus views a predictive nature of many of the Psalms
in which Jesus fulfilled the hope that went unfulfilled during the earthly Israelite reigns. He also
notes the extensive use of the Psalms in the New Testament, by both Jesus and the writers, to
emphasize the importance of the Psalms for the Church today.
One of the strengths of the book is its emphasis of understanding the literary structure of
the Psalms in the preparation and preaching from the Psalms. Poetic devices can often be lost in
translation. Parallelism is common in Hebrew poetry and provides an insight to the flow of a
given Psalm as well as other rhetorical structures such as repetition, inclusio, and chiastic
patterns. It is also important to understand the literary structure of the Psalms including its
division into five books and the use of different types of psalms throughout the book. Knowing
these types and their functions aids in the interpretation of the Psalms.
Each of the 22 Psalms is dealt with in separate chapters that follow a shared outline. The
text and the context are dealt with first followed by a discussion of the literary and rhetorical
qualities of the text. Greidanus then deals with the theocentric aspect of the text. After addressing
the theme and goals of the text, he offers various ways in which Christ can be addressed through
the text. Finally, the author offers an expository sermon based on the text.
Helpful appendices at the end include additional sermons and meditation. It has as
already noted, “Series of Sermons on the Psalms,” which offers alternatives to The Revised
Common Lectionary for preaching from the Psalms. Two appendices, “Ten Steps from Text to
Sermon” and “An Expository Sermon Model,” offer primers for sermon preparation.
Sidney Greidanus’ Preaching Christ from the Psalms: Foundations for Expository
Sermons in the Christian Year provides a rationale for preaching from the Psalms in the church
today. As an Old Testament professor, I do question the need to always to preach Christ from the
Psalms. The Psalms can be a personal and rich resource for the reader to voice his or her own
self to God. Nevertheless, Greidanus provides an introduction to understanding the literary and
rhetorical nature of the poetic literature of the Psalms. Each chapter offers a good example of the
depth of research and thought that should be included in the sermon preparation process. This is

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accentuated by his inclusion of developing the sermon and the expository sermon and also
additional suggestions for developing Psalms sermon series in the appendices.
Dwayne Howell, Campbellsville University, Campbellsville, KY

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